I am haunted by a simple comment. A set of church financials was looking a tad scary and I called on a great pal of mine. He applied his international turnaround expertise and came up with the goods. He is outstanding and I guess that if we followed his advice we might well wriggle out of our dilemma. We'll see.

Imagining that the work was done I ran him back to the train. "The real trouble," said my friend, " is that you are not acting as if you believe in what you preach."

This trouble has haunted the church from the beginning. You can smell hypocrisy at a hundred yards and it makes a mockery of your message. Jesus diagnosed it.

The problem he had with the Pharisees was exactly that. Anyone with an iota of self-awareness knows this territory well. Any preacher with an iota of self-awareness wakes in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. How can mixed-up, weak-willed, selfish me possibly preach a gospel of love and integrity without causing the assembled congregation to fall about laughing?

The media highlight this rather painfully. Look at these so-called Christians! They preach peace and knife each other in the back. They preach love and then set about gay-bashing. When was the last time there was a good-news story in the press about the church?

The recent "big society" debates have explored community dynamics at depth. They tell a different story: a story about the local church bringing real, practical hope and comfort to their community. Creative and committed, Christians are living out their message: the love of Christ brings about real transformation. It is hard and often messy and imperfect, but in thousands of places people are being helped and relationships are being built.

At the heart of this local engagement is the support and value the church gives to marriage and family. The Church of England has recently done some research to discover how we might up our game in this area. At the moment only 22% of couples getting married do so in a Church of England church.

Strangely, more than half of all couples believe it would the right and proper place for their wedding but they don't ever make it through the door. They expect to be made to feel inadequate, somehow not religious enough to qualify.

As a result of this a lot of effort has gone into improving the quality of welcome and the general accessibility of a church wedding. That may be part of the story, but how about if we upped the ante and had the courage to express what we really believe about marriage?

I had to learn this lesson as a keen new curate. Full of naive enthusiasm, I would plough through a pre-packaged marriage preparation course with each couple.

My intentions were good, but the results must have been cringe-worthy. We talked about money – what did I know? I've never had any! We talked about having children. We delved into areas of pop psychology. I'm convinced that these lovely people sat on my sofa feeling patronised and bored. Gradually the light dawned. They had already had done their own marriage prep. It's called living together. Marriage in the 21st century is not the beginning of a relationship but its crowning glory. It's the gold standard. When you understand that, you can stop messing about, pretending to be Virginia Ironside and open up the real conversation about spirituality.

Some of my colleagues have become cynical. They talk about people simply choosing their church because it looks pretty and therefore they treat them as if their intentions are lightweight. It's part of a larger picture in which we undervalue the spirituality of the unchurched and consequently have trivial conversations. We offer them a bag of crisps when they are hungry for serious steak.

Today I have a different sort of conversation, one that is more emotionally engaging and real.

Now, when a newly engaged couple sit together on my sofa, they often end up in tears – tears welling up from a growing awareness of the deep spiritual dynamic of their relationship. We talk through the service. We explore the profound nature of the promises they are to make. We talk about how to set about feeding not only the physical and emotional hunger of the one they love, but also the hunger of their souls. Finding the courage to set the bar that high has transformed my work.

I'm no longer entirely naive. I know that not all these marriages will stay healthy. But I also know that a timid and superficial pep talk is selling them short.

Marriage preparation in a Christian context is about engaging with the deeply spiritual within all of us because that is where life gets really exciting.